The geopolitics of drug trafficking in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, opium is not clandestinely traded on some back alley
black market. Opium is the market.

In 1991, Myanmar was dethroned as the premier source of opium and now
Afghanistan holds a near-monopoly as it is responsible for producing over 90%
of the world’s opium. Such a drastic increase can be attributed to a favorable
socioeconomic and political climate that allowed the illicit
trade and production of opium to become an essential part of Afghanistan’s
economy.

This did not happen overnight. The anti-government elements in
Afghanistan paired with the instability brought on by seemingly endless warfare
in the region have allowed drug warlords to operate without contestation. The
profits from opium were so undeniable that insurgent groups (including the
Taliban) could no longer ignore them, and now it is difficult to distinguish
between insurgents and drug traffickers as they are typically one and the same.
Corrupt government officials have also tapped into this revenue stream. Even
civilian farmers, with no ties to the Taliban or other drug warlords, choose to
produce opium over more traditional agriculture as the illicit drug trade is
the only viable means of feeding their families.

In Afghanistan, opium is not clandestinely traded on some back alley
black market. Opium is the market. The Taliban have been funding their
military capabilities through access to this thriving opium economy for many
years and for the most part they have met with little opposition. To let them
continue unhindered is certainly unwise. But finding a clean resolution here,
of all places in the world, is difficult.

NATO has promised to address the rampant drug trade, but their efforts
have not been very effective thus far. They cannot simply firebomb all the
offending opium crops, because that risks collateral damage which may further
alienate local farmers, who are already fed up with the international presence
in their homeland. This would make Afghans even less interested in helping NATO
troops achieve their primary objective of curbing insurgency.

Other reasons Russia, Iran, and recently China (among many other
countries), are so up in arms about the Afghan drug problem can be seen in the numbers of the UN’s own drug
reports. These countries are some of the largest markets for the opium trade,
and as supply rises to meet demand, so too rise fatality rates due to drug abuse.
More Russians die from Afghan drugs, per year, than the total number of Russian
fatalities during the entire 10-year Soviet-Afghan war; injection of opiates
have caused an HIV epidemic in Central Asia; and Iran holds the dubious crown
as the world’s most opiate addicted country. If we measure by mortality rates
alone, then the Taliban’s involvement in opium production has been a more
successful war tactic than any act of terrorism they have committed thus far.
And it has certainly been more profitable as well.

Several countries were at one point planning to sue NATO because their
intervention “led to a deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan and the
rule of law has not been restored.” This political upheaval in an already
unstable region created the perfect storm for drug production and insurgency to
run wild, but the degree to which NATO is directly responsible is certainly up
for debate.

However, NATO-led programmes appear simply to be displacing opiate
production from one zone to another. Farmers have not found other crops
profitable enough to provide them with food for their families, so opium
production continues. And when the drug trade
represents nearly half of Afghanistan’s economy, this is almost
understandable. This trend will not change anytime soon.

Clearly, abandoning the frail Afghan government to deal with overwhelming
narcoterrorism is not ideal. But after a decade of climbing the Sisyphean hill
that is Afghanistan, Americans are tired. They want out of Afghanistan more
than they are afraid of Taliban drug production. And the Afghan drug problem is
not limited only to the Taliban. The entire country is supported by this
market. Waging a true war on the opium trade, for this reason alone, would be
to wage a war on innocent Afghans. And continued international pressure in the
region appears to have reached the point of diminishing returns.

Pouring additional resources into that political quagmire may be wasteful,
but it seems foolhardy to just surrender the area to the Taliban, who will
simply continue to wage profitable proxy wars via drug addictions overseas.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.